Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2009
Abstract
Adaptive selling capabilities enable salespeople achieve success with their customers. Despite numerous studies, there is very little understanding on the mechanisms salespeople use to adapt to various selling situations. Current sales management practices overlook a salesperson's capability to craft customer specific sales strategies, relying excessively on end-results and activities based controls. This paper aims to increase knowledge by conceptualizing relational behaviors as trust building and value creating efforts, and measuring adaptive selling as a salesperson's capacity to vary these behaviors depending on customer relationships. Our empirical analysis establishes a positive link between trust building behaviors and sales effectiveness and performance levels.
Keywords
sales management, customer relations
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Kumar, Ganesh, "Unraveling Adaptive Selling: An Empirical Analysis of Underlying Relational Behaviors" (2009). Student Scholarship. 518.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/518